I’m too young to have seen Sir Georg Solti in concert;
watching him in action on ICA Classics’s DVD demonstrates
what I’d always suspected listening to his recordings.
It’s a clichéd phrase, but it seems apt in this
case: Solti was a ‘force of nature’, barely able
to contain the fizzing energy he demonstrated on the podium
and his physical gestures confirm my long held impression of
him as an almost violently demonstrative conducting presence.
Solti hacks and cuts through the air with flailing arms, determined
to communicate every ounce of the pulverising energy he wants
to extract from whichever score is before him. In the earliest
film on this disc, Solti wrings all of the power out of Wagner’s
Flying Dutchman Overture, arms flapping in a manner that
you couldn’t call graceful. Ultimately, in this 1963 BBC
studio performance with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House,
his taut and driven Wagner is pushed too far, but elsewhere
his relentless approach worked - how many of us heard The Ring
for the first time in his ultra vivid stereo Decca recordings
and were hooked for life?

Appropriately, Solti is seen in conversation with John Culshaw,
acclaimed producer of that seminal Ring. Culshaw is a relaxed
interviewer in a segment featuring conversation and rehearsal
on Strauss’s Don Juan. Solti never sits still -
that same restless energy as evident on the sofa as on the podium
- but the rehearsal and performance footage of Don Juan
shows Solti much more receptive to its quieter moments than
his Dutchman conducting let on. It’s a shame that
the rehearsal footage offers no English Subtitles as Solti’s
voice doesn’t always carry as far as the nearest microphone
and his comments are often delivered extremely quickly. One
revealing nugget that is heard perfectly is his instruction
to the orchestra that it ‘doesn’t matter if it’s
the wrong note, I’d much prefer a good rhythm’.
Solti was, after all, all about the rhythm. With Culshaw, Solti
speaks about his experiences of Strauss, right at the end of
the composer’s life - I didn’t know, for example,
that Solti had conducted at Strauss’s funeral - and his
comments about the work’s programme are genuinely enlightening.
It is a shame, though, that a picture of Strauss fills the screen
at the outset of the eventual performance, meaning that we don’t
get to see how Solti launches into the extremely difficult upward
surge that begins the whole wonderful work.

An Ethiopian relief concert gives us a view of Solti almost
two decades later, conducting Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony
with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. This 1985 performance, given
at the Royal Albert Hall, again proves Solti’s concern
for rhythmic vitality above all else, but he is noticeably more
contained on the podium than in the 1960s films. The first movement
is trenchant and not particularly swift and the Andante
that follows is carefully paced. Most impressive are the taut
and concentrated final moments of the finale, in which Solti
finds a tempo which makes Beethoven’s series of almost-conclusions
seems little less over-egged than usual. The BBC Symphony play
well for Solti, though there are a few issues of ensemble in
the third movement; an upwards glance is all Solti gives away
by way of concern, though.

Solti’s Dutchman is not helped by a poor audio
production, rendering the sound quality little better than a
mid-1940s radio broadcast - how much of the wind section’s
apparent poor form is rather due to the wretched sound is something
we’ll never know. The Strauss fares better, although initially
it seems startlingly glossy in the treble after the Wagner.
Considering the Beethoven hails from the digital era, one might
have expected better sound quality than the BBC - who made the
original broadcast - provided; it’s narrowly focused and
dynamic contrasts are dulled somewhat, but it doesn’t
detract from the performance too much. It’s worth pointing
out that none of this is the fault of ICA Classics, who have
served up another enlightening and enjoyable slice of classical
music’s televisual past.

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